Wednesday, December 28, 2011

How to Put Cricut Handbooks on your new iPad and/or iPhone

I'm thinking a lot of people must have gotten iPads and iPhones for Christmas and may want to load their Cricut handbooks. I have them on my iPad and I love to just scroll through the handbooks while I watch TV.

If you have an iPhone, iTouch or iPad, here's how:

1) Go to the App Store/iTunes and purchase Goodreader ($4.99 - see HERE) OR you can use the iBooks app (free) BUT the instructions are different for loading the manuals. I will have to work on that and come back and put those instructions up.
2) Download it onto your device.
3) Open app.
4) Go to "Web Downloads"
5) Open "Browse the Web"
6) Enter this address: http://www.cricut.com/information/cartridge_library.aspx
7) Find each cartridge you want and click on "view" under the handbook column
8) Click and download each one (it can do more than one at a time). For the iPad, at the prompt, click on "Download Linked File". If you are prompted to see if you want directions, click "No".

Once you have downloaded all the cartridges you want, click on the "My Documents" folder at the start page of Goodreader.

Now, to organize them:

1) Click on My Documents and then hit the "Actions" button OR the "Manage Files" button (if on the iPad).
2) Click on button that says "New Folder" and name your folder "Cricut Handbooks". Then hit "Done".
3) Click on the actions button and you will now see some buttons/circles in front of each of your downloads. Click on those.
4) Then hit the "Cut" or "Cut/Move" button and Done.
5) Now, click on your Cricut Handbook folder and hit "actions". Then click on "paste".
Now they should all be in your folder. WOO HOO!

To see the handbooks in landscape view, go to settings on Goodreader and click on the Settings then General Settings then click on for "allow auto rotations" then click done twice to exit. For the iPad, it seemed to automatically be in landscape mode since I was already viewing things that way.

You could also download the Gypsy manual.

What's great, especially with the iPad, is that you can zoom in on the images - it really helps with some of the trickier cartridges with small little layers.

Hope this helps!

EDITED TO ADD: My pal, Shirley, Okieladybug, did a video on how to put the handbooks on your Kindle Fire. Check it out HERE! It's really good!

Thank you so much! you and Mel always give the BEST information. Now will this work on an Android? what about a windows laptop. My BIGGEST pet pev about my cricut is not being able to see the images in a larger format. I've printed out the manuals in large format, looked using craft room and tried to make it work with my gypsy, but I just wasn't getting the kind of results you have shown on the ipad! I don't own an ipad - I'm a android os person but would almost consider getting one if this was not possible with an android tablet. Thank you SOOOOOOO much for the info (and inspiration to do some cricut fun)

While the photo in your post looks GREAT, I didn't have that success in real life. First of all, I paid $4.99 for an app I really didn't need. I wish that I had seen that it works in iBooks before purchasing it. Secondly (and most importantly!) the handbooks aren't very legible! The images are slightly fuzzy and have copyright info diagonally across the entire page. The slight fuzziness is increased when I try to enlarge the image. I'm disappointed because I really wanted it to work.

This might be a dumb question, but I will ask it anyway. I don't have any of those devices, however, I'm wondering if I can download the handbooks to my laptop? It sure would be nice to view them like that rather than getting them out of where they are stored.

Thanks for the info...I got my carts downloaded, but don't know how to download the gypsy Manual? I gave my MIL a gypsy for Christmas and it didn't have any manuals in the box( although it was new) so I gave her mine, but if I can download a copy of it I would be good to go!

I just finished doing this in iBooks. It took a while, but was EASY!! Once you download iBooks, all you have to do is go to the website Joy wrote about in her post. When you click 'view' beside whichever cartridge it is you want to see, you will be asked if you want to open it in iBook. Click on iBook and voila! It will open as a PDF in iBook. I created a Cricut folder and moved all of them into that. It's awesome! Thanks Joy, for letting me know this was even possible :)Michelle

Thank you for this! We are moving so all my cartridges are packed away in a storage unit, but I want to do a small scrapbook for my sons teacher. I just got an iPad so this is the perfect thing for me! Thanks again!

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